Author Archives: Ron

About Ron

Long time Battletech fan, Arts and literature dabbler. As comfortable in the 31st century as the 21st. I don't care for sports, but I'd make a big exception on Solaris.

MK2 Megabot vs Kuratas in Upcoming Solaris-Style Battle

2015/08/11

ONE SHALL STAND, ONE SHALL FALL…

After their unsuccessful Kickstarter in October of last year, the Oakland California-based MegaBots Inc. seems to have done the best thing they could do to stay active in the public arena. They picked a fight.

In late June via video, Andrew Stroup and Gui Cavalcanti challenged Suidobiashi Heavy Industries to a duel- A batchall, if you will, to fight against Suidobiashi’s current combat mecha- Kuratas. Neither Stoup nor Cavalcanti are unfamiliar with either engineering competitions nor high media exposure. Both appeared in the 2012 Discovery Channel reality show: The Big Brain Theory: Pure Genius.

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Weisman and Harebrained Schemes to make Battletech Returns?

2015/07/29

“TACTICAL ‘MECH COMBAT RETURNS TO THE PC.”

I was a backer of MechWarrior Tactics before it fell apart amidst development. MechWarrior Online is alright from the first-person view- vehicle simulation side, but I was hankering for something a little closer to the original source material, and with a much richer immersion in the interstellar politics and intrigue that makes up the BattleTech universe. Personae Studios‘ MechWarrior Tactical Command was, in my opinion, an unsung classic game that gave me a mobile MechCommander fix. But the game was fairly short and its title’s similarity to MechWarrior Tactics as well as its exclusivity to high end Apple mobile products made it instantly obscure and isolated. Of course there is always Megamek, but for one reason or another, I’ve never really had a good experience with it.

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Robogames Video Series: BattleBots of the 21st Century

2014/12/11

I’m sure most of you at least remember that there was a pair of Robot arena combat shows in the latter half of the 1990s called Battle Bots and Robot Wars. Each week, a number of amateur and professional propellerheads would get together to do battle within one of three weight classes. The shows were on the air for several seasons; and was pretty popular, spawning how-to books, video games, and other marketing tie-ins. Even Mythbusters alumni Jaime Hyneman and Grant Imahara competed.

Photo by Dave Schumacher

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Lockheed Martin: One Hundred Megawatt Fusion Engine within Ten Years?

2014/12/07

On October 15th, Aviation Week received exclusive access to Lockheed Martin’s Revolutionary Technology Programs unit; specifically regarding a new Compact Fusion Reactor (CFR) program lead by Aeronautical Engineer Thomas McGuire. McGuire and his team make a claim that uses a lot of phrases like “holy grail” and paradigm-shifting. How compact? The containment vessel in test unit is said to be roughly the equivalent of a business jet engine. “I studied this in graduate school where, under a NASA study, I was charged with how we could get to Mars quickly,” McGuire said in the article.

If true, this may ultimately be the answer to planetary energy needs within twenty years. With the initial testbed dimensions expected to just about fit on a truck bed. I know its larger and probably of too high an output to compare to, say a CoreTek 275 XL engine, but can power a small city of 100,000 people all by itself at one hundred megawatts. And this is just a working testbed due within the decade. This isn’t some guy tinkering in his garage in his spare time either, this is the Skunkworks; Lockheed Martin’s go-to gang of whizkids.

Compact Fusion Reactor cross-section. Pretty much looks the way I remember their BattleTech equivalents work.

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Father and Son Halloween Sunder Cosplay

2014/11/17

It was over a month ago that I wrote about a Warhawk ‘mech cosplay; I mentioned that the BattleTech themed projects I’ve seen online have been almost universally reverse-join clan designs entered in competitions. These have been more puppets than outfits, really; with the operator’s black-clad legs sticking out the back and between those of the ‘mech.

But in this My Modern Met article, a BattleTech fan has not only put together an inner sphere assault ‘Mech, but it’s a proper suit since the Sunder is a nice, slat-sided humanoid design with limbs bulky enough to accommodate both himself and his infant son Geraint- who seems more than happy to pilot the BattleMech powered by his dad, Ryan.

The article also explains that the torso and arms attach by velcro around Ryan and Geraint- who sits in a baby harness strapped to dad’s chest. The legs attach to a belt around the waist, so it doesn’t take long to don the Sunder suit.

courtesy of mymodernmet.com

BattleTech: First Somerset Strikers and Sourcebook Retrospective

2014/11/11

I think the BattleTech cartoon was probably as close the franchise came to making the mainstream of popular culture. I could include the videogames (which I have discussed before) but the cartoon took place during a time where big fighting robots were generally in the mainstream anyway. MechWarrior 2, Robot Jox, and of course blockbusters like Terminator 2. Even Japanese distributors were beginning to test the US market with titles like Patlabor and different flavors of Gundam. Big robots were beginning to become as much a staple of science fiction as the space opera. (Some media, like Gundam and BattleTech combined the two).

So how does one market a mech-centric space opera towards children? As seen with other US franchises like Exosquad, don’t sugar coat it. In space operas, there are big wars going on, and people die. 1st Somerset Strikers doesn’t show death like Exosquad does, but one of the plot developments banks on one of the major characters failing to eject from his devastated BattleMech before it explodes and being thought dead by his compatriots for most of the season. Likewise, though it specifically mentions in the official BattleTech canon that the Jade Falcons evacuated the city of Romulus before glassing it with orbital bombardment, it was never brought up on the show. So the viewer thinks they just watched an entire city of people get vaporized. Heady stuff. I really wish they had made more of a deal of the destruction of Edo on Turtle Bay later in the season, considering that most of the inhabitants in fact WERE massacred by the Smoke Jaguars (one of the reasons that clan was targeted for termination during Operations Serpent and Bulldog)

Promotional artwork for the animated series

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Megabots- Is Solaris VII Coming to Live Action Fruition?

2014/11/02

Growing up amidst the popularity of both the giant robot craze and the never-ending advancement of technology in both the military industrial complex and commercial avenues- I keep waiting for life to imitate art. Over the years even private individuals have taken a swing at constructing real stompy robots with some pretty mixed results at best. Unlike BattleTech, we’re seeing the beginnings of powered armor proliferation, but not a large robot.

The reason, of course, is that there is absolutely nothing simple about how a bipedal being moves. From the standpoint of a fighting vehicle, designing a multi-ton machine that puts all of its weight on a pair of feet just doesn’t translate well, and the larger you try to scale them, the more difficult the problem becomes. SO when I read about an ambitious kickstarter to build a pair of bipedal fighting machines for the express purpose of having a death match- I was hesitant. But optimistically so.

Four-way Free-for-All event concept sketch by FlyingDebris

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Masakari Omnimech Cosplayer Wins Gold

2014/09/09

Some of you might have seen this thread on the official forums where user Ion Raptor has been working on a mobile 1/5th scale replica of a Ghost Bear Warhawk prime. I asked him what gave him the idea for this. He answered:

“The idea was from a sad lack of BattleTech costumes besides the occasional pilot cooling suit. The MW4 Warhawk itself was chosen because of its blocky and imposing design. The prime variant was a product of finding shipping tubes the perfect size for PPCs. The Ghost Bear scheme came from the pilot figure I bought, which was a Max Steel toy that happened to have grey and blue shorts on. If I ever do one again it will either be much smaller or through commission so that logistics are someone else’s problem.”

The Invasion of Rasalhague reinacted at Gencon 2014

The Invasion of Rasalhague reenacted at Gencon 2014

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Industrial Class Exosuits now in Operation and soon for Sale!

2014/09/03

Aliens, HALO, Gears of War, (of course) BattleTech, Edge of Tomorrow, and a whole lot of other science fiction properties feature powered strength-enhancing suits in a utility roll before being used in combat. I believe the idea goes back to Robert Heinlein’s 1959 novel Starship Troopers, but it’s really only been in the last fifteen or so years that science and engineering think tanks have been actively (and seriously) experimenting with something useable for military, commercial and even medical applications.

Bay twelve, please.

I’ve mentioned TALOS and Warrior Web; which I believe are undergoing field trials at the time of this writing, as well as the Hybrid Assisted Limb medical exoskeleton that’s also flexing its bionic muscles. But it appears in this article from New Scientist that South Korea’s Daewoo corporation already has a suit in operation in an industrial role at their main shipbuilding and marine engineering facility at Okpo-dong. Visually and performance-wise it is highly reminiscent of the Raytheon corporation’s XOS Mark 2 suit that the Iron Man and Avengers actor Clark Gregg donned in this video.

I can’t wait until they start armoring these things up.

Daewoo’s suit is a working prototype for a more robust version that could “lug around 100-kilogram hunks of metal as if they’re nothing” according to the lead engineer Gilwhoan Chu. So far the carbon fiber, aluminum and steel frame is rated only up to thirty pounds and has a battery life of only about three hours. Well, you’ve got to start somewhere. And when building fifty-five thousand ton container ships, even the small jobs that can’t be done by massive industrial robots still require a human with some heavier lift capability than we’re normally built for.

The Daewoo suit weighs in at a hair over sixty pounds, and can be fitted to anyone from 5’3″ to 6″ in height. Still a far cry from the iconic power loader from Aliens, but definitely a step or two in the right direction.

I have a headache THIS big!

And that direction seems to be taking us to Panasonic’s robotics arm, Activelink. Unambiguously called the “Powered Suit“, this bulkier exoframe can lift up well over two-hundred pounds on a charge that lasts about five hours. It’s pretty slow at about five MPH, about like a leisurely walk. And the best part is, it’s being mass produced for private sales. The initial run of one thousand units is set to begin in 2015 and the suggested retail price will be under five thousand bucks a pop.

If I had the scratch- I’d take it.

Well bargained, and done.

Robotech, Macross, and the Unseen

2014/08/20

Even though it was decades ago, I’ll never forget the Saturday morning where I became forevermore helplessly, HOPELESSLY addicted to large military robots. I have since developed a bit of ‘flowery’ disdain for the bastard chimera that is the Robotech saga, but I am at least nostalgic that it was the vehicle with which I first was introduced to Supredimensional Fortress Macross.

It was 1985. I was eight years old, and until then Saturday morning cartoons consisted mainly of an assortment of Hasbro toy advertisements and video game tie-ins. Anime was and would continue to be very sparse (though much of it was animated in Japanese studios). Transformers (of the aforementioned Hasbro adverts) had a very strong effect on me for getting turned on to big stompy bots.

And then Robotech showed up; which took the transformable robot thing and showed that “hey- people can drive these things dammit!”. The VF-1 Valkyrie in all its flavors (which became the Wasp, Stinger,Phoenix Hawk and their LAM equivalents), was NOT a nae indestructible machine like the Transformers were (until half of them got spawn-fragged in the animated movie the following year). They, at least the tan-colored ones popped like zits throughout the show. But they had it easy compared to the thrashings the poor Destroids received.

Three variant Valkyrie variable fighters; originally used as the Wasp, Stinger, and Phoenix Hawk ‘mechs.

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